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Eric Smith asks: "I own a
next-generation video codec development company,
idea65 (covered on Slashdot as
our previous incarnations Opencodex,
and Flashingyellow).
We have a finished product, but don't quite know what to do with it, and we're
looking for someone (or some company) interested in taking it over."
Here's the chance for some of you out there looking for a good cause, to
contribute something. Loads of people (me, included) would love a good
cross-platform video codec.

We started our journey as an
open-source
project contest in response to DivX, before
DivX networks came into
being. Due to a variety of issues (not the least of which was our
main investor pulling out and funding having to come out of my own
pocket), we mutated into a closed-source project that we intended to
distribute ourselves through the help of a third party. We finished
product development almost a year ago and have a really great
portable video codec that runs on Linux, Mac OS, and Windows.

The problem we've run into is that with the economy being as it is,
our candidates for distribution assistance have also all dried up.
We've considered just GPL'ing it and seeing what the open-source
community could do with it, but don't have anyone to oversee changes
and official versions, not to mention from the looks of the DivX 4.0
project, there don't seem to be a lot of people interested in (or
with the knowledge to) work on video codecs.

More or less, we've got a bunch of very well written CodeWarrior
projects that need to find a new home as we don't really have the
expertise or financing to sell it or even give it away. So, I'm
interested in knowing if anyone has any suggestions for what to do
with the project, or interest in taking it over (those with
experience with this kind of thing)."

If seriously interested, you can contact Eric using the mailto
link at the beginning of this article.

Releasing it under the GPL would mean that there would be a set of "hacker types" interested in deploying it amongst a group that is technically knowledgeable.

That's helpful in getting it known, which is worth rather a lot.

The codec would not in that form be usable outside of the context of freely-redistributable software. Someone who wants to integrate it into their cool, but proprietary viewer would find that they can't, at least not with the GPL-licensed version.

That can't represents the place where they can look for their revenues.

It's not obvious that there can possibly be interest in it without there being some sort of release; the company hasn't money to spend on renting Times Square to show the world they've got a K001 Product.

Releasing under something like the GPL may be the only way to get it into use, and to get any return from it.

hmm, since you are the copyright owner you could also dual-licence it. First release as GPL, and allow companies wanting to include it in a proprietary product to licence it from you directly. Basically, you get the best of both worlds..

Au Contraire to you as well, my friend! You are forgetting that if he GPL'd the code and allowed outside contributors, he would have to impose restrictive agreements upon those contributors under which they would be forced to give up all copyrights to the code they contribute.

Otherwise, the code they contribute will be released under GPL as well, and he (no longer being the sole copyright holder) would have to gain their permission to release the updated code under a non-GPL license. As copyright holders, they could object.

It's kind of hard to get people to work on a project for free when it's apparent that your intention is to immediately release it under a non-open license. Usually, you have to pay those guys.

The net effect? You've exposed your codec's guts to the world without being able to easily commercialize any of the benefits of being open-sourced.

Sure, he says exactly what I did. That in order to dual-license a project in which you accept outside submissions, you must necessarily force them to assign copyrights to you. He simply says that he has not yet been sued over the deal. Has he actually protected himself from liability or a legal challenge? Certainly not, and more power to him! However, not all people are so brave as to make business deals based on murky legal grounds.

Don't GPL it, that would be silly. If you guys made the darn thing with the intention of earning money, you should darn well get some money for it!

Well, if you intent to get some money with it GPLing shouldn't ruin the plan. If somebody wants to use this codec commercially they probably sell closed source program with it and cannot therefore use codec without purchasing different license. GPL doesn't restrict from releasing product under another product simultaneously. One could even claim that GPL version would be a full-featured demo to sell codec.

If the codec does something revolutional like not using DCT and interpolation between keyframes then not to GPL it may be a good idea because ideas aren't restricted by copyright. Without money you cannot patent it and that would be only yet another hated software patent anyway.

Whether or not the use of GPLed codec would be legal in Windows or MacOS is another question. Most programs in these platforms are closed and cannot therefore link with GPLed code. Strictly interpreted this means that you cannot use GPLed codec in say for example WMP. On the other hand WMP may be claimed to be part of OS and GPL allows linking with OS libraries...

On the other hand WMP may be claimed to be part of OS and GPL allows linking with OS libraries...

That's an interesting loophole. So M$ can claim that IE is part of the OS and link any GPL-library with it. Doesn't this defeat the protection that many GPL-authors seek from the use of GPL?: "M$ can't take x and use it in their proprietary software"

Is there a clear definition of OS libraries in the GPL? It seems that one can 'pervert' this to mean just about any library that is/can be installed in the system and can be called by applications.

Certainly MSoft cannot make some of the ie code call any GPL code directly. The GPL code has to at least be some sort of "plugin" that IE can function without, and it probably has to be an easily added & removed component.

The question is if this sort of add-on is allowed. I believe it is, but there may be more information.

MSoft can be a pain and license the header files so they cannot be included by GPL code, their management has threatened to do this but I think their engineers may be showing a little backbone recently and stopping them from being totally mindless assholes.

Well it's easier to throw out perceptually redundant high frequency information in the frequencey domain, so almost any CODEC is going to start with SOME sort of frequency transform, whether DCT (MPEG, H.26x), DWT (wavelets) or even plain old FFT.

Reality also dictates that one movie frame is related to the previous one (except on MTV), so a keyframe difference mechanism is also pretty much mandatory for good compression.

Advances in video compression are really more in the details (e.g. CU30) than in the overall techniques applied. The only way to get radically better compression is going to be to transmit a model of the scene rather than the pixels themselves.

Ogg-Tarkin is still in the very earliest stages of development. It'll probably stay there for a while until the guys over at Xiph get Ogg Vorbis 1.0 out the door.

And if Vorbis is any indication of the quality level that Monty, et al want to achieve with Tarkin, it's going to kick some serious ass.:-)

To be on topic, if you guys aren't getting anywhere with investing, it may be worthwhile to see if the Tarkin guys are interested. I mean, if you're really thinking about giving it away anyway, maybe you can give some another project some serious help.

The best way is to do a little research to find out if there are any movers & shakers in research and give it to them. Otherwise, find a reputable school, contact their CompSci guys, and ask if their interested (or at least ask their computing group if they'll distribute it).

If you're codec is patent free, the people over at the ogg multimedia project would be bigtime interested. They've got the audio portion (vorbis) well along but they're still aways away from having their video portion (tarkin) completed. Head over here [xiph.org] for more info

Geeks code for the love of code, if they can convince VCs to give em money to do what they love then good for them.

It sounded to me like they started this company during the tech bubble, but I think they were just trying to cash in on the side. The real goal seems to have been the codec itself. I don't see where they made a mistake.

No VC is going to give you money if you haven't already invested in your own business. Most VC's won't even touch a business that doesn't have a large amount of angel (family, friends and associates) funding already either.

...making a presentation and taking it to various movie houses for thier online trailers? It may be hard to get them to think about switching from Quick Time, but if you can give a good quality video, with a smaller download, and multi-os support, some of the smaller movie houses may consider it.

Also, what about companies that are working on video colaboration. Generally they have in house codecs that they write, but they are not always targeted for multiple os's.

Oh dear, another ignorant soul who doesn't know the difference between the container format (Quicktime) and a codec (Sorenson).

Quicktime is just a wrapper around any codec you want to use. Currently that tends to be Sorenson 3 as its the best one shipped. I also watch various Divx movies that are in Quicktime format, since I installed the plugin that lets me do that.

Since he says it works on Mac OS, the chances are he already has a Quicktime plugin for his codec. Infact, he'd be insane *not* to package it in one of the major container formats as these have "install on demand" support.

User goes to a page with a movie in their wizzy new codec, and, if he can get the deal set up, Quicktime just says "you don't have the codec you need to see this movie click ok to download and install now?".

My apologies, I'm just a little sick of explaining the same thing over and over again.

Actually, the Quicktime container format forms the basis for the MPEG-4 standard (which is itself a container format).

MPEG-4 also suffers from confusion between "MPEG-4 the container format spec" and MPEG-4 the video compression codecs currently being used. Of course, the companies like to call it just MPEG-4 because it makes it sound better than MPEG, MPEG-2 and MP3.

Both Quicktime and WMF are moving towards or already do support MPEG-4. So perhaps one day each codec can be packaged only one and used with any MPEG-4 compatible container format.

Assuming Apple and Microsoft don't "improve" on the standard, of course.

while its true that most people hare happy with the DivX codec at the moment, if a few people started to use your codec, and it proved to have better audio/video qualityand not as much loss as DivX does, while still keeping the filesizes nice and small, it could take off in a big way.
You should see how it does as closed-source first if that was your plan in the beginning, and open it up later if you decide its not doing as well as you wanted it to.

It's a hacked codec that doesn't work with macs. Not well, and in the case of the confusingly-named DivX 4, not at all. And there is still much room for improvement in all aspects of the codec. You have a real edge over most other codecs in that yours is cross platform - so your main competition is RealPlayer, VP3, and 3ivX for now. If you go commercial you have to beat both of them, if you're going open source you just have to do better than VP3 and 3ivX in at least one respect.

Of course if Quicktime ever officially goes Linux (I doubt WMP ever will) you'll have many more codecs to contend with. And you need to either promote it, or make it so incredibly good everyone switches. DivX sucks compared to newer open source and cross platform codecs but it's very popular because of the name.

There are tons of open multimedia projects such as Gstreamer [gstreamer.net] which could benefit from such a codec, assuming it's entirely patent free and unencumbered by copyright liabilities...
Depending on how good it is, this could be great for OS...

It doesn't even have to be patent free as long as you hold the patents yourselves, and you are willing to let an open source project use them royalty free.

Many open source projects use patented technologies; it is just that since they can't afford any license fee for the patents, when a patent owner gets upset the open source project has to code around the patent, (which has been done more than once.)

I think they did have a goal, produce a good, Linux/Mac/Win compatible native codec. The problem is DivX beat them to it, so now the goal isn't so well defined. BTW, I'd replace DivX with MPEG-4, since that is what the MS codec that DivX was based on was a modification of (so many levels...) Of course, MPEG-4 is not only for privacy, but can be legitimately used for saving drive space (duh), but, of more primary interest, streaming multimedia. That is really what the low bitrate, but not as hot quality of MPEG-4 is meant for. And instead of MPEG for DVDs, say MPEG-2, as MPEG encompasses a lot of territory that has nothing to do with DVDs (from VCDs, mpg, mp2, mp3, etc...)

If you don't truly outperform other codecs, you probably won't make money with it. Codec performance is very tricky to measure, with everyone using the codec wanting something slightly different (compression speed, decompression CPU load, image quality, motion quality, etc).

One option is to provide the compressor/decompressor for free and then offer a higher quality version of the compressor for sale. It's a tough market, though. If it's truly revolutionary, you could try selling it to Apple, Microsoft, or Real. You'll need some really good side-by-side comparisons with their current codecs and MPEG4 to get their attention, though.

Nope - on that logic you've just trashed the laser! So say goodbye to your CD, DVD, high-speed communications systems, guidance systems, engineering/plotting systems, etc etc etc. It was in the same category when was first developed: technology looking for an application.
Writing a new codec - if it's good enough - could lead to many many new things.

Would it be possible to show us the quality of this codec somehow? Maybe start with uncompressed video, and have the DivX, VP3, etc. people all compress it down to a specific bitrate, and you do the same. Then once it's compressed down to that bitrate you could decompress it(since we don't have a decoder...), thus letting the general public see the quality of your codec.

Would that work? Because there are a lot of codecs, and unless you can show that this one is better than the others, I really don't see why people would be interested.

It'd also be helpful if you'd benchmark your codec's playback CPU load versus DivX and the other popular formats. While nowadays PCs can handle some heavy demands, lightweight decoders would still be desirable, especially for embedded applications, etc.

You mention that now that DivX 4.0 is out, no one cares anymore. Does your codec outperform DivX4.0 in terms of bitrate, quality, and/or performance? If the answer to all the questions is no, then perhaps it would be best to let it die. If the answer is "not now, but with work it could be..." and you want to stop working, you may want to first fish around for interested companies, and as a last resort give it to the Ogg group as something they could hammer into being Tarkin. I guess if you really don't care about the code anymore but really don't want to let it die, you could pass it on to the Ogg people anyway and they can decide for themselves whether the code is worthwhile or at least salvagable. If it isn't, then they can kill it instead of you:)

Are you asking how to make money from it, or how to donate it to the open source community?

How competetive is it? DivX/MPEG-4 even if patent encumbered is now available in an open source version from the ffmpeg project, and there are other open source CODECs available that are competetive to or even better than DivX such as VP3 or the amazing CU30.

If your CODEC can compete with the alternatives then it would probably be instantly adapted by the Ogg Tarkin paroject which is looking to deliver an open source CODEC but so far is really only at the research stage.

If your CODEC csn't compete head-in with the state of the art, then maybe you're better off looking to embed it in an application (e.g. a cross platform ICQ video conference helper) where the utility outweighs anything else.

So what your saying is that you started a business to develop this video codecs and now its complete you have no idea what to do with the code?

This is insane and shows everything that was wrong with the way VC money was being invested in recent times. What did you expect to happen - that the problems of having no way to turn a profit or even see any income would have solved themselves by the time you had developed the code?

Having had 2 previous companies attempt the same thing (and Im assuming there was more to it than just a simple renaming) this also indicates that things may not have been very well planned - youve clearly failed twice already.

Best of luck finding a way to make use of your product, and hopefully youll think a bit more before going for attempt 4!

Actually, we did have a very detailed business plan, that we thought was actually going to make money and contribute something to the open-source community. But, as with many things, and as someone said earlier, don't depend on third parties. We didn't have much choice but to rely on third parties for distribution and funding. In the end, all the funding came out of my pocket, and the distributor went under. We have a good product, we actually beat DivX to being done by about 3 months, but we got stuck there. The codec is very light and highly portable, the original version was less than 16k compiled and out-performed DivX and was patent and copyright free.

Though I guess that is something that people will want to see for themselves, and that's where we are stuck, we don't even have the funding for the legal help to get it into testers hands. After working on this as hard as I have, I would hate to see the project just die w/out it seeing the light of day. That's why I asked for possible answers from Slashdot. Maybe someone can think of something we haven't. Its happened before.

...the original version was less than 16k compiled and out-performed DivX and was patent and copyright free.

Be sure to protect your ideas by either patenting them yourself or just by publicising them. As long as you have not yet publicised the codec and shown "prior art", someone else may beat you to it and patent the idea!

we don't even have the funding for the legal help to get it into testers hands.

Okay, earlier you were talking about 'thinking about GPL'ing it' and having trouble 'giving it away'.....

...but you can't give it away because you can't pay lawyers to help you give it away?

Something fundamentally wrong with that....

At any rate, if you're sincere and not just fishing for investors, I'll add my metaphorical voice to those suggesting contacting the Ogg people over at xiph.org, who I'm sure would LOVE to have a " very light and highly portable [...] patent and copyright free" set of code to use with the Ogg Tarkin project...if you REALLY want to see it get out into the world...

I checked out the website, but it seems mostly incomplete. I am particularly interested in comparisons with Sorenson on Mac OS.

Sadly in today's world success in a venture like this depends largely on marketing, but I think the/. community (if not IT purchasers at large) is primarly concerned with the quality of the codec. Can existing codecs be beaten across the board when they seem to be optimized for different platforms?

Since really the only way as I understand it that such a product could make money is embedding in successful closed source projects, I think this would be an ideal candidate for the TrollTech business model. Release a GPL version that is embeddable only into GPL and GPL compatible Free Software products. This will gain you recognition and acclaim if your product is good. Now you've stirred up interest. You should release, simultaneous with the GPL release, a press release indicating your intention to issue commercial licenses for embedding in closed source products. Hell, you can even claim your commercial licensees will get access to the "Plus" form of your codec.

Now pimp the hell out of the GPL version and everyone that whines about how they can't use it in their closed source products, point them to your web page explaining how to contact you/your company for commercial licensing terms. Also perhaps consider a joint distribution agreement up front with some commercial video tool providers whereby you will develop plug ins, etc. I gather your point is this might be hard in this climate. Also consider getting pr0n distributors to use it. No, I'm not kidding. Honestly, people download pr0n from usenet, etc. If there is pr0n out there in your video format, people will get players for it. This will eventually convince commercial users that your format is worthwhile. There are plenty of Linux/Mac pr0n viewing folks out there, so you definitely will find some rapid fans if you take this tactic.

Anyway, this is my advice for a bootstrapped marketing technique that you might find effective. I make no promises, but it sounds like you don't have much to lose if you are posting to Ask Slashdot for marketing advice (hint: lots of/. readers can tell you about GPL violations, some can tell you about how the Linux kernel is put together, and very few can tell you how to successfully market a product).

No, it's not true. You, as the copyright holder, can distribute the product under any terms you see fit. People to whom you distributed it under the terms of the GPL, get to use it under those terms. People to whom you've distrubuted it under alternative license terms get to use it under those terms.

The only issues that arise are when other people start to have some copyright interest in your product; then, in order to distribute it under proprietary terms, you must have their permission as well.

This is why, for instance, Sleepycat Software requires patch submitters to assign the copyright for the patch to Sleepycat before they apply the patch to the official Berkeley DB code. Something like that approach seems neccessary unless you want to end up maintaining two codebases: the GPL one and the proprietary one.

If I were you (which I am patently not) I would not bother trying to sell a codec. I think there are many out there today and without some sort of corporate backing or a really compelling difference, you probably will not have much impact in a crowded marketplace. What would make more sense is developing a product that uses your codec, but provides a different sort of product or service. Maybe build a video confrencing system, or a monitoring and logging system. These ideas are off the top of my head, but you get my drift - add some sort of additional value, some application that makes your codec shine while solving a problem. Then you'll have a market and getting inverstors and customers will be a whole lots easier.

With apologies to the good folks at Penny Arcade [penny-arcade.com], of course. If their archive search wasn't a Windows-only executable (whatever happened to web-based searching, guys?) then I'd even link to the right comic. But alas, it was not meant to be.

I get a good laugh every now and then, but I can't count the times a serious topic has been spammed by a bunch of thoughtless nonsense that has been modded up by people too lazy read thoughtful comments.
Oh and about your last comment--you bet I do!;) Bwhahahah!

I'm sure there's room around here...maybe under the couch? Maybe between 3ivx and DivX? Or between MPEG-4 and Sorensen? If not then surely there's room between MJPEG and Indeo? Oh, I feel like breaking into song over the wonderful video codec situation! [webartz.com]

Oh! 3iv1 3iv2, aasc abyr and aemi too! afli, aflc boy those are old! AMPG, ANIM, AP41 and you! Think of how your home videos will look, in ASV1, ASV2 or ASVX!! Mine look great, and I'm sure yours will too, with AUR2 or AURA!

And out of the A's and into the B's la da da do do do deeee! Bink, bt20, btcv bw10, boy those b's are short! Those B codec makers better get a move on! But onto the c's like the birds and the bees, cc12, cdvc, cfcc, cgdi, cham, cjpg, cpla, cram, cvid cwlt, cyuv, cyuy! Boy these things multiply fast! Makes me wonder, why the're called video codecs, and not WABBITS!

But D's come along, DIV2 and DIV4 and DIV5, with venerable DIVX short behind. DMB1, DMB2, DSVD, DUCK, DVAN, DVSD, DVE2, DVX1, DVX2, DVX3, DXTN, DXTC, and no more D's do we have! And the E's are short, because normal people don't start video codecs with vowels, ETV1, ETV2, ETVC are all that survive.

And that ends my really bad song. But wait! Thre's more! Those are only the ones with FOURCC definitions! That doesn't include file types! There's MPEG-PS, AVI, Quicktime, and the venerable Microsoft format heist asf.

I think the statement "I developed a new video codec!" should be punishable by death.

weird. about, oh, 90% of the replies here are either rude, completely useless (this one likely included), or "funny" (mostly rude too). the messages with the highest scores are the most useless. the 3 or 4 i found here that actually had suggestions were only scored 2 or 3, while one of the most asshole-like posts i've read here in a while is scored 4 - wtf? if this is gonna turn into yet another i'm-15-and-learned-to-spell-fuck-today sites, i'm outta here. there's something to be said for maturity. not that there's anything wrong with being funny, but the line between prick and comedian is thin, and too many people here are crossing it.

i don't think i'm too young to know this, or too new to know this (i've actually been making decent money at this for 15 years). i'm aware that we laugh and point at fools - this is to be expected and only a fool thinks otherwise. the point is that we don't know the whole story behind this particular situation.

true, only allowing one browser on the site is foolish - we point and laugh. happens all the time. what we don't know is that the two previous businesses he mentioned failed - maybe the name was changed for some reason. as for business plan, it's reasonable to assume that they failed miserably at it, but then again, when one has investors backing them, you are only concentrating on getting the product working. perhaps this guy (and one or two others) are all that's left of the original team - the marketers and salespeople all left for greener pastures already. if they're developers without capital, how can they expect to market something?

in any case, this is a guy asking for help, suggestions, or whatever, and what he's getting is "shove it up your ass" and "you're an idiot" and "your company sucks." he, himself, didn't fail - the codec is written and working (supposedly). someone else gets paid to sell it. now that there's no money, he's looking for other solutions. how many of the threads here are actually helpful in that regard?

I sent you an email by the way in case this is something serious; I do what you need (software development and liscensing/bizdev) professionally.

Unfortunately I was unable to view the page in my linux browser (sending me to a page to teach me about standards..) then after downloading an activex pane each page there is no content. Too
bad since you have all these people looking. In particular comparing it right against Sorenson and WMP with nothing behind your words makes you wonder if you want to touch something like this out of the blue.

Anybody who could help is going to need more subtantial information, for example what you think are the pros/cons of the software as compared to competitors in your space, to help with diligence. GPL might be one way to do it, and people might love you for it, but it will very likely hurt your chances on liscensing or selling it outright at this stage and getting your money back.

In particular a number of companies that are likely to listen are here in Japan but GPL is not something they want, unless maybe you already have a big team building it through GPL. They know tech and make quick decisions if everything is clear and up front, that's your challenge.